Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940
William L Shirer
Language: English
Pages: 1084
ISBN: 0671203371
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Alliance: The Inside Story of How Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill Won One War and Began Another
The Gothic Line: Canada's Month of Hell in World War II Italy
Operation Mercury: The Fall of Crete 1941
Blood and Ice (The Dogs of War, Book 7)
Bomber Command: Battleground Berlin: July 1943 - March 1944 (Reflections of War, Volume 3)
Ruins. The events of the last few days have created an entirely new military and strategic situation. If France does not face up to the consequences there will be a stampede among the friendly countries which until now have been firm. It will be a rush toward servitude…. And we must have no illusion as to what will happen thereafter. New invasions will come to our country and threaten to submerge it.5 Without waiting for Hitler’s next conquest the French shortly after Munich had bestirred.
Material. In fact, before I had finished my research in Paris in the late 1960s, the material was becoming mountainous, and it took some time to make one’s way out of the thick woods of documentation and testimony into the clearing. The so-called “Wilhelmstrasse Documents,” published by the German Foreign Office in 1941 and covering events in France from May 29, 1939, to June 3, 1940, are of considerable value. These consisted of a selection from 1800 cartons of secret papers from the French.
Grow dull when he left off character assassination or a call to bump off some Republican scoundrel and indulged in pseudo-metaphysical speculation, displaying his considerable classical learning, Léon Daudet, a lighthearted Parisian to the core, was almost always amusing and sometimes hilarious. He had an impish, Rabelaisian mind—most of his novels were considered risqué if not somewhat pornographic—a boyish love of scandal and a passion for exposing it, a fantastically rich and vulgar vocabulary.
Ambassador that France, because of the pitiful plight of its people, would have to ask for an end of hostilities. He would not do it himself, he assured Biddle, because he had signed the pledge to Britain. At any rate, he concluded, the “final decision” would be made at the meeting of the Council “tonight.” That was what the cabinet ministers had understood, and that was what Reynaud was saying. But it was not what was in his mind. Biddle seems to have felt that the Premier was being less than.
Detestable measure. It delivered the passage of the Rhône and deprived the Army of the Alps of its principal protection on its northern flank.”41 General Orly, commander of the Army, which had been holding out so valiantly against the Italians, protested that the order “sacrificed” his troops. The mayors of other towns, learning that Lyon would be spared, besieged Bordeaux with demands that their municipalities also be declared “open cities” and that no warlike acts and particularly no bridge.